Tsunami victims face starvation, disease
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The death toll in Asia’s tsunami disaster ticked relentlessly upward to top 125,000 as clocks ticked down to a desolate new year in countries struggling to get food and water to millions facing starvation and disease. Prayers replaced New Year’s Eve celebrations in battered nations and Indonesia called a major summit of global leaders for January 6 to discuss the devastation across Asia, take stock and plot how to overcome the world’s worst natural disaster in recent memory. Indonesia has emerged as the country worst affected by Sunday’s huge earthquake off its western Sumatra island and the tidal waves it spawned, accounting for more than two thirds of the dead. Heads of state from India and Sri Lanka, which have both suffered massive casualties and damage, were expected to attend the conference as well as all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Major aid donors Australia, New Zealand, the United States, China, Japan, and South Korea were also invited along with representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, Asian Development Bank and European Union. Half-a-billion dollars have already been pledged for relief operations after the waves of death left up to five million people homeless, said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, describing the tsunamis as “an unprecedented global catastrophe”. Starvation, injury and disease were pushing massive numbers of refugees in Sumatra’s Aceh province closer to death with each passing hour, the United Nations said, as the number of Indonesians confirmed killed climbed towards 80,000 with warnings that the death toll could reach 100,000. “The indications are the disaster is going to be a lot worse than we have anticipated already,” United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) communications director John Budd told AFP by telephone from Jakarta. “Aceh really is ground zero.” Budd said up to 500,000 people were “extremely vulnerable” because of a lack of shelter, while 900,000 children were suffering from a combination of illness, injury, trauma, separation from families and being orphaned. He said there was a desperate shortage of food and fuel across the province, which had already suffered from a lack of infrastructure due to a decades-long violent struggle between separatist rebels and the government. “There’s no food, there’s no fuel, it’s a cruel situation. If we get food in, say, rice, there is no pure water or fuel to cook it. We are desperately trying to break this cycle,” he said. With international aid agencies still struggling to get aid into Banda Aceh, Budd said many people were leaving the city to escape the stench of rotting corpses and threat of disease, and to search for food. Near Meulaboh, an isolated town of 40,000 people southeast of Banda Aceh where fears have been high that almost the whole population may have been wiped out, survivors were close to starving after not eating since the disaster. “This is my first meal in five days,” said construction worker Iskandar Ibrahim as he devoured rice brought by an AFP photographer who had travelled 12 hours through dense jungle on a motorcycle to reach the town. The second worst-hit country, Sri Lanka, marked an official day of mourning after cancelling all New Year celebrations with the death toll set to exceed 29,000. The national flag was at half mast at state buildings and radio and television played sombre music as relief workers carried out the grim task of burying rotting corpses in mass graves along the island’s devastated coast. Adding a ghoulish note to the tragedy, local media reported that bodies of tsunami victims in Sri Lanka have been stolen from hospitals and “sold” to distraught relatives while fingers and ears of corpses have been chopped off to steal jewellery. In Thailand, where more than 2,000 foreigners were among 4,510 people confirmed killed, there were also reports of some rescue workers — or people posing as them — looting stores or stealing from bodies. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra asked government agencies not to hold New Year celebrations and traditional countdowns in Bangkok and the northern city of Chiang Mai were cancelled, replaced by Buddhist merit-making ceremonies for the dead on New Year morning. India, with nearly 12,000 confirmed dead, also called off New Year festivities. As relief efforts continued in southern parts of the country that bore the brunt of Sunday’s horror, officials in the far-flung Andaman and Nicobar islands forecast the numbers of dead there could reach 10,000 alone. Misery was everywhere as survivors, still reeling from the enormity of losing family members, rocked in silent grief or wailed openly in relief camps. More : nation.ittefaq.com |